With the drought of 2012 creating extreme conditions for farmers across a great swath of the U.S., farms are turning to Twitter and other social media tools as a support group to share information, gain insights and keep customers informed about changing conditions. In some cases, farmers are even beginning to use realtime technologies to connect directly with consumers and create new market efficiencies. Read →
rstat.us is an new open-source service that, according to its developers, sets out to clone the basic functionality of Twitter with a non-commercial and distributed system. What does this mean for business users of social media? Until the service starts to attract a significant number of users, not much in terms of reach. The real issue: is this just the tip of the iceberg? Will users rebel against the idea that one or two major sites control their social experience and personal profile data? And will that create an opportunity for a service like rstat.us to successfully challenge the established players? Read →
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